Thanks for the information, when I was writing my post I was thinking you'd probably be the one to know about this stuff. I did try google but obviously didn't have the right keywords. I'm glad at work I only have to deal with biochemical tests for identifying bacteria

It doesn't look anything like a Neanderthal to me. I would hazard a bet that they are both skulls from Dmanisi. While there are recognizable similarities with Erectus, they do seem to retain more primitive morphologies. Some anthropologists have proposed a new species name for them, H. georgicus.

At least you have responded with some sense. You also could not respond without once again implying ignorance. Dentition is to do with diet and environment, not the rise to humanity.

As you can see in the homo erectus skull above there are very human teeth in an obviously ape head. The canines look nothing like the ones you defended as being obviously human. This has nothing to do with being scientifically educated. It has alot to do with not being blind.

Apart for your reply I see no more here worth responding to. Blevins finally appeared after his huge challenge to me has become fluff.

I have tried to kick off a challenge and your reply nor any other has opened the door to any discussion still. This is going to be a game of disrespect. None of you are interested in creationist vews, you just wish to use creationists as whipping boards at the hands of a control freak that allows you to continue unmoderated.

The thead asks why there are no intermediates, I have offered an explanation and provided evidence that none of you have refuted so far.

Today was the day I decided a couple of weeks ago as my last day here. It is too bad I was suspended yet again.

As creationists can see this evolution myth is easily dismissed. It is easily dismissed no matter what sort of creationist you are. All these people have is theoreticals that can be hypothesised into showing mankinds closest living ancestor is a turtle if they needed to.

Thanks Portillo and others for your support, but there is nothing here for me to learn with this calibre of evolutionists on board.

EvC is not for everyone and it is most certainly not for creationists that can defend their stance.

I didn't see any PMs from you, though perhaps you sent me an email, I won't be able to check until tonight. But if you can post messages then you can send PMs, which is what I requested you do.

I don't know why you are ignoring my requests and much of the contents of other participant's messages, but you are, so in what I'm going to say next I'm going to enlarge the text and change the color to red so that everything I say will be very easy to see:

In this message, your very first post after returning from suspension, you have ignored my requests to leave extinct species like Homo erectus out of the discussion.

You have ignored my requests to send a PM telling me if there are any difficulties you're experiencing reading messages.

EvC Forum attempts to differentiate itself from the rest of the Internet by providing a venue where discussion between creationists and evolutionists can actually make constructive progress. This is achieved through moderated debate following a set of Forum Guidelines that are neutral with respect to the opposing viewpoints. If debate participants are permitted to ignore moderation then it will be impossible for EvC Forum to achieve its goals, and so moderators enforce the Forum Guidelines through the suspension process.

So I'm going to suspend you now, and you will remain suspended until you and I have a discussion via PM (which will still work while you're suspended).

Question: Morphologically, should humans, chimps, gorillas and orangutans be grouped together at some level of a classification hierarchy?

At some level? Yes. Definitely at the primate level. What some people seem to forget is that species are grouped by shared characteristics, not by differences. Chimps, gorillas, bonobos, and orangutans are all different, and I don't think Mazzy would disagree. Therefore, differences between humans and other apes is not at issue. What is at issue is the shared characteristics. So what other group of species do humans share more characteristics with than the great apes? The answer is none. Therefore, humans are within the ape group.

However, Linnaean taxonomy is arbitrary. Where you draw the line between groups is always going to be subjective. For example, why not have all old world monkeys and great apes in a single taxonomic Family. There is actually nothing stopping this from happening, other than tradition. At the same time, if you are going to break humans out of the great ape group because of the differences between humans and other apes then you must also break off the other ape species into separate families because of the differences between them as well.

What it comes down to is if you are going to put chimps, bonobos, gorillas, (gibbons?), and orangutans in a single group then you have no reason to exclude humans as well. If you want to exclude humans then you will have to put all of the other ape species into separate groups in order to be consistent.

Added by edit:

From a genetics point of view, it makes even less sense to put humans in a separate family. Chimps and humans share more DNA than chimps and orangutans. If anything, a grouping that put orangutans and gibbons in one group and chimps, humans, and gorillas in another would be consistent with the genetic data.

Linnaeus himself debated whether or not to put chimps into the Homo genus, and this was in 1758 well before Darwin was even born. There is an unmistakeable resemblance between us and our ape cousins. When we look into the eyes of an ape we can't help but notice the same spark in their eyes that we have in ours. Some may say that comparing ourselves to other apes only insults the human species. They never stop to think of how we have elevated our taxon.

I know you hadn't seen the summation message when you posted this, but this works as an excellent summation. If you wish to say more as part of a summation I'd like to suggest that you append to this message instead of posting another.

It wasn't a fair fight in terms of numbers, but not in terms of knowledge, either. The topic's title, Why are there no human apes alive today?, displays an unawareness of the modern classification of human beings (people *are* apes), and so is asking an impossibly anbiguous question: "Why are there no human ape species in existence today?"

One is left fumbling around for the meaning of this question. The questioner must be assumed to know that gorillas and chimps are apes, but it is also apparent that he is unaware that humans are apes, too. He must also think that evolutionists share his belief that humans are not apes. So to his mind evolutionists believe that the human ancestor was part ape and part human, i.e., a human ape, and he's asking why this human ape is no longer around.

But the first task must be to straighten out the confusion about classification, otherwise the differing definitions of the word "ape" will constantly muddle the discussion. But though many evolutionists attempted to remedy this situation, sometimes patiently, sometimes not, none ever succeeded. Even at the end of the thread, no creationist responded to ZenMonkey's detailed description of the classification of humans in Message 1065.

The creationist rejection of the idea that humans could be classified in the same group with chimps, gorillas and orangutans is presumably because:

To creationists the term "ape" carries an emotionally negative connotation. Apes are dumb and brutish and possess no human qualities. Even if creationists were to provisionally accept the possibility of evolution, they would only consider candidates possessing what they see as the noble qualities of humanity: intelligence, creativity, aspiration, compassion, mercy, love, a soul. Never mind those other not-so-noble qualities of humanity: hate, anger, greed, stupidity, selfishness, indifference, an evil spirit.

Grouping humans with other apes seems an implicit endorsement of evolution. In fact, to creationists acknowledgement of the relatedless of any life with any other life, outside the ambiguous "kind" classification, endorses a natural cause for the origin of mankind, and means we are the most beloved creation of nature, not God.

As can be seen, the creationist position confabulates fact with unrelated fact, and fact with fantasy and religion. Separating facts from nonsense is necessary for meaningful discussion, but this never proved possible.

Errors were committed by both sides, but the errors committed by evolutionists were rarely ones of fact. Let me first enumerate the types of non-factual errors, and these were committed by both sides:

If you can ridicule it, you've rebutted it.

If you can be condescending or denigrating, you've scored points.

But there were a number of erroneous tactics that were employed solely by creationists:

Ignoring rebuttals. Given that it was a many-to-few debate this is understandable, but rebuttals of some ideas, like that humans are distinct from apes, were consistently ignored or simply rejected outright.

Inability to recognize genuine knowledge or expertise. Mazzy was especially disbelieving that some of the evolutionists are actual scientists, and that some, like Wounded King and Taq, are biologists.

Believing everything they read that agrees with them. Mazzy was outstanding in this category, too, for example at one point rejecting the evidence from technical journals that there are a couple hundred thousand shared ERV's between chimps and humans because a creationist webpage said there were only 7.

Supporting positions with irrelevant evidence, or with evidence that actually argues against the position. Mazzy was again outstanding in this category. Never was it possible to find out why Mazzy thought a link supported her position, because rather than respond to challenges she would just repeat the assertion with more links that didn't support her position.

Taking on impossibly illogical positions and then refusing to let them go far after they'd become untenable. My best example here is where creationists refused to acknowledge there's anything such thing as a transitional. After all, even if one focuses solely upon evolution within kinds, there must still be transitionals, for example between dachsund and Great Dane. Obviously there must be such a thing as transitionals.

The net result is that the topic was never really discussed. While the evolutionists can perhaps be critisized for being overbearing or condescending or impatient, they were the ones who knew what they were talking about. They were the ones who brought the facts, and the explanations of how those facts fit togther to provide a more general understanding.

Concerning whether evolution is right and wrong, or whether classifying humans as apes is right or wrong, this moderator takes no position when performing a moderator role. But this moderator does know what science says about what evolution is and how it works, and what science says about how humans are classified, and the creationists never displayed any interest in engaging with this information. Most of the creationist participants simply worked at ignoring or denying this information, but Mazzy went the extra distance by expending a great deal of effort misunderstanding much of what she read, and then using that misunderstanding to build a parody of science as confused and buffoonish. Perhaps on some level aware that she couldn't rebut the actual science she instead built a caricature and then rebutted that.

A great deal of time was spent discussing human ancestry, but much of it was wasted because of the creationist belief that humans are not apes. Mazzy again provides the best example, spending much of her time declaring, usually for no discernible reason, that this skull was ape and that skull was human, and therefore there was no relationship.

Who won the debate? No one. Where so much effort is expended to prevent understanding there can be no winners, only losers, and so in this case the creationists were the big losers.

I find it rather a mystery, that many of the evolution side can get so bent out of shape, demanding scientific evidence from the creationist side when you know that such evidence does not exist.

I would suggest that anyone of the evolution side who becomes frustrated by the lack of satisfactory response from the creationist side, should just back away from participating. Getting cranky serves no useful purpose in the debate. Leave it to the calmer heads, to carry on the evolution side of the debate.

Or something like that.

Kudos to those of the evolution side who succeeded in presenting useful and interesting messages. Hopefully those all too rare messages got cited via the "Posts of the Month" topics.

Adminnemooseus

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